Things Are Going Swimmingly

Hi folks! We're here safe and sound on Heron Island. There are literally thousands of birds on this tiny plot of sand and coral, and they're chirping non-stop. It's faded into the background somewhat, but it's still weird.
I'm working a lot, but I've been jumping off the jetty as often as I can, mostly at night, which is pretty cool. I've seen countless Eagle Rays, a couple reef sharks, and dozens of baby turtles just hatching and racing madly for the ocean. How adorable!
I've just got back from the mainland again, as I had today and yesterday off, and I had to pick up a few things, so I'm starting my week again tomorrow, and I'll get Saturday/Sunday off again. Hopefully, I'll be able to write a better entry than this, but my time is limited on here, and I'll wrap up now.
Miss you all, and I'll talk to you soon!

This is the end....

Well folks, this is it. Today is my last day in Sydney, and then I'm off. Because Heron Island is miles off the coast, I have no cell phone access and there's only one computer hooked up to the internet to share amongst everyone there. This effectively means I will be incommunicado for up to 3 months. I will be jumping back to the mainland every couple of weeks so I can get emails and text messages, but I will likely not be updating my blog very often. Certainly less often than I do now.

But in the meantime, just know that I'm probably sunning myself on a coral beach, watching whales swim by the pier, or snorkelling through the Great Barrier Reef. Jealous much?

I hope everyone takes good care of themselves, and I'll get in touch with you all in the next few months! Farewell! *MWAH*

Simpson's Quiz

Here's the quiz, ya cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys:

1. What is the name of the Simpson’s dog?
2. True or False: Mayor Quimby has a nephew?
3. How many eyes does Blinky the Fish have?
4. What instrument does Lisa play?
5. Who is the founder of Springfield?
6. What is Springfield’s rival city?
7. Who was Lisa’s first boyfriend?
8. What year did the Simpson’s first Air on Fox?
9. In what sector does Homer work in the power plant?
10. Of Rock, Paper or Scissors, which does Bart always choose?
11. What is the first name of Principal Skinner’s mother?
12. What dollar amount is listed on the cash register when Maggie is swiped through in the opening credits?
13. What is Lenny’s last name?
14. What is Carl’s last name?
15. Who were the musical guests on Krusty’s Komeback special?
16. What is the Simpson’s home address?
17. What is the name of the drink that Homer invents?
18. Who shot Mr Burns?
19. What country did Bart cause America’s embassy to flee?
20. When alcohol is prohibited in Springfield, how does Homer get booze to Moe’s Tavern?
21. What is Homer’s job at the Springfield Power Plant?
22. What does Krusty the Klown’s father do?
23. What is the name of the actor who plays McBain?
24. When the Simpson’s moved to Cypress Creek, who was Homer’s boss?
25. What was the name of Moe’s family restaurant?
26. Who played Fallout Boy in the Radioactive Man movie?
27. How old is Marge: 34, 36, or 38?
28. When Itchy and Scratchy were taken off of the Krusty the Klown show, they were replaced by what Eastern European cartoon?
29. Name the aliens that occasionally show up in episodes of the Simpsons.
30. What was on the first Valentine’s card that Lisa gave to Ralph?
31. What was Krusty Burger renamed to after the IRS took it over?
32. What is the name of Homer’s half-brother?
33. What is the name of the small man who dances for nickels at the docks?
34. Homer did the voice for which cartoon character: The Klu Klux Klam, Danger Dog, Poochie, or Disgruntled Goat?
35. Who are Marge’s sisters?
36. What country is Moe the Bartender from?
37. Name the drinking establishment that tries to buy out Moe’s bar when he introduces the Flaming Moes.
38. What are the ages of Bart and Lisa?
39. Which of the Beatles have appeared in episodes of the Simpsons?
40. Who are the 2 guest stars who have appeared on the show, but had their names changed in the credits?

Bonus 1: Simpsons theme song writer, Danny Elfman, was in what New Wave band in the 80s?

Bonus 2: Of the 4 major Simpsons, Marge, Lisa, Homer and Bart, who is the only one not to have a speaking part in every single episode?

Tiebreaker: How many episodes of the Simpsons have aired, as of the end of last season?

Tiebreaker: How many times has Kelsey Grammar, the voice of Sideshow Bob, been a guest star on the Simpsons?

Stay the Course, Kevy, You're Doing Super!

Well folks, not much has happened in the past week worth writing about, I'm not gonna lie to you. We're anxiously awaiting our departure date, which is Saturday the 20th. Shawna and I fly out of Sydney, land in Brisbane, twiddle our thumbs for a couple hours (that's some nice thumb-twiddling, boy), and fly to Gladstone (an economic powerhouse of 35,000 people). That's gonna be some fun times.
Anyhow, we stay there for a night, then catamaran over to Heron Island Sunday morning to start our 3 month stint on a tropical paradise.
In other news, in honour of it being National Simpsons Appreciation Week in Canada, our quiz night was all Simpsons questions. 42 questions of nothing but Maggie, Bart, Lisa, Marge, and that other one. It was a rousing success, although it was all Europeans and North Americans that took it. The Asians in the crowd were somewhat perplexed. I suppose I could toss the quiz up here for my faithful readers to answer at their leasure. In fact, I will do that, but I'm at the wrong computer, so I'll have to do that later. I'm such a quiz-tease!
Um... what else can I say? Oh, I found a bottle shop that sells Canadian beer! I can buy Moosehead, Kokanee, or Labatt's Blue. a 6-pack is $20, which isn't even that much more than a 6 of Australian beer. It's really out of the way, but it's nice to have a taste of Canada every once in a while. Now if I could find a place that sells Crown Royal.....

Random Pics and Updates!

Hey folks! Well, this week has been super busy, I've been working every day at the restaurant, and then at night at the hostel. I've barely had time for any relaxing. Still, it's nice to have something to do and keep me out of trouble. I have some very interesting news, but we'll et to that in a second. First of all, I have some more pictures you can gaze at longingly:


This is me pole dancing. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but I can only think of 2 words to describe this: Dead sexy!


Here's just a random picture of the people I took out on the pub crawl last weekend. There were actually about 10 more people but they're still in the first bar. Perhaps they were being held hostage, or trapped in tar pits, I'm not really sure. My memory at this point was already starting to get fuzzy.


Probably owing to Canada's climate and considerable cleanliness, I had never actually seen a live cockroach, except at the Assiniboine Zoo (in an aquarium with hundreds of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches). Well, I can safely say that I have seen my share living in Sydney. They're all over the place, and there's not much you can do about them. This cute little guy was found dead outside the lifts in my hostel. The police suspect it's foul play, and interviewed everyone on the floor regarding their whereabouts the night before. Turns out it was a drug deal gone bad. The coin is a Aussie 5-cent piece (about the same size as a Canadian dime) just to give you some perspective.

That's all the random pics I have, but what about my news? Well!

As I have written previously, I am going to be travelling around the country with my friend, Shawna. We've been looking into getting a car and going fruit picking and such and haven't been able to find anything worthwhile yet. However, she has found us jobs here.

We're leaving Sydney on the 20th, flying to Gladstone, and taking a catamaran over to the island. We'll be there for 3 months, and then we head back onto the mainland to continue our travels. Still, working on a resort island on the Great Barrier Reef = Score!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! I hope everyone had a fun-filled New Year's Eve, as I know I did (from what little I remember). I've been able to connect up to the network here in the hostel through devious hacking and much pleading and whining, which also means I can upload some of the pictures I've been meaning to show people. But first, I'll get to the New Year's Eve party...

New Year's Eve is a pretty big thing here in Sydney, seeing as it's one of the first major cities to see the new year, so they like to do it in style. Basically, we were told they would be lighting fireworks off the Harbour Bridge and to see it, you can find a park around the harbour (of which there are many) and just hang out. But, of course, everyone else has the same idea, so we wanted to get there early. We started the day off at 2pm, and it all went downhill from there...

As we were taking the ferry from Circular Quay to the park we had chosen (at Cremorne Point, about 2km away from the bridge) 3 WWI bi-planes flew overhead. I thought it was pretty cool, though I'm not sure why they chose to fly those instead of something a little more 2007. Oh well, they didn't call me to plan this celebration, so I can't be complaining too loudly.

I also decided to take a picture of the Harbour Bridge before it was lit up and I got too drunk to know what was going on. If you click to zoom in on the picture, you'll notice that there's an outline of a coat hanger on the side. We were all baffled as to what this meant, so I asked one of the guys I work with at the restaurant, who is an Aussie and has lived in Sydney for 22 years, and he told me it's because the Harbour Bridge was initially designed using a coat hanger. "That's one enormous coat hanger," I exclaimed. It was then that he pointed out that it was just a model, and that I should lay off the glue. I agreed.

This is the view we had of the bridge from our spot at the park. There were approximately 4 billion people in this park, but we were able to bribe and execute enough people to get this spot.

Shawna was smart enough to pack this flag, which we hung on the tree just above our heads. This proved to be a wicked smart move, as people would walk by, and just say, "Hey, you're from Canada!" or just randomly shout "CANADA!" to which we would all go "WOOOO!". Keep in mind that this went on all night, and we were about 10 meters from peoples houses, so we really kept the property values way down if anyone happened to be doing any house shopping on New Year's Eve. But really, you don't want those people moving into the neighbourhood anyways, bunch a party-poopers!

OK, so it started off with just 3 of us at this event, Me, Shawna and Ashley (who is actually from Winnipeg! NOBODY from Winnipeg goes anywhere! Hi Ashley!). Ashley's the one with the dark hair, glasses and holding her hand up like she's waving for Journey to finish playing their set. The rest of these people just decided to join us because we had the Canada flag hanging, and they're all Canadian, from various cities. We seriously had about 2 dozen people just stop and chat with us because we were Canucks. Some joined us, some ran away in fear. It was good times.


I wasn't trying to be artistic or anything, I just wanted to take a picture of the city skyline at night, but my camera isn't so great at that. If I move my arm at all, it makes all the lights wavy like this. And at 12:30am after drinking all day long, my arm was moving quite a bit. In fact, my whole body was wobbling like a monkey after ingesting black tar heroin. But it's still a nice picture so I thought I'd include it here.

I also have some videos I took of the fireworks going off, which I will link up here once I get a permanent site to host them. That, and my skydiving video.

And finally, I would like to wish my Mom (who is blogless so no link is available) a Happy Birthday on January 3, who is turning the ripe old age of . I would also like to wish Angie (who also doesn't have a blog to which I can link. Get with the times, girl!) a very Happy 30th birthday. Time marches on folks. I hope everyone is well, and I'll be posting some more pictures and such in the next few days.

Oh yes, I almost forgot...